Have Confidence In Yourself

Bad Antogast, Germany

Questions & Answers

I want to tell you a story. A white cat put a label on its head that said, ‘I am a black cat’, as it kept moving around.

Any amount of anyone telling, ‘Hey, come on, you’re not a black cat, you’re a white cat', it says, ‘No, I am a black cat.’

So like that, if you think you don’t have confidence, no one on earth can make you confident. Wake up! You have all that you need in your life. You are self-reliant, you are beautiful, you are truth, you are beauty. That is what our spiritual path tells you.

You haven’t heard Ashtavakra Gita? Listen to the 33 knowledge tapes of Ashtavakra. It will give you strength and confidence. It will open you up. You have all these beautiful qualities within you.

For them to blossom, it just needs a little nurturing.

Everything is already there. All the petals are there, it is only a matter of time. When you know this, great peace dawns within you.

As a child you’ve been told, ‘You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good!’ And we think we are no good! This is not the ancient culture. This is not the path of spirituality.
The path of spirituality has always inspired you; it has always said, ‘You are great, you are part of the Divinity, you are love, you are beauty, you are truth!'
This knowledge needs to be instilled in people, rather than saying, ‘You are hopeless, you are no good. You are a sinner, and you are good for nothing.’

Bombarding a child as no good has brought in so many problems. We should instead say, ‘You are a part of the Divinity. You are loved the way you are. If you have some weaknesses, point them out and know that you will grow out of it.’

Whenever you feel, ‘Oh, I can’t do it', then you can’t do it at all. But when you say, ‘I can get over this, I can do it’, then that energy, the courage, enthusiasm, zeal, and everything comes.
If you are a smoker and you say, ‘I cannot but smoke’, hey, come on, get up and say, ‘No, I will not touch cigarettes’, and then see what happens.

Similarly, if you’re suffering from bulimia and you say, ‘Oh, I’m so weak. I can’t do anything!’ Come on! Wake up! You are not weak.

The spiritual path instills confidence. You’re in the right place. But don’t be in a hurry.
If you want to walk ten miles, it won’t happen tomorrow. Practice. First walk one mile, then go to two miles, then five miles, and in two to three months, you can walk ten miles.
I want to tell you a story. A white cat put a label on its head that said, ‘I am a black cat’, as it kept moving around.

Any amount of anyone telling, ‘Hey, come on, you’re not a black cat, you’re a white cat', it says, ‘No, I am a black cat.’

So like that, if you think you don’t have confidence, no one on earth can make you confident. Wake up! You have all that you need in your life. You are self-reliant, you are beautiful, you are a truth, you are beauty. That is what our spiritual path tells you.

You haven’t heard Ashtavakra Gita? Listen to the 33 knowledge tapes of Ashtavakra. It will give you strength and confidence. It will open you up. You have all these beautiful qualities within you.

For them to blossom, it just needs a little nurturing.

Everything is already there. All the petals are there, it is only a matter of time. When you know this, great peace dawns within you.

As a child you’ve been told, ‘You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good!’ And we think we are no good! This is not the ancient culture. This is not the path of spirituality.
The path of spirituality has always inspired you; it has always said, ‘You are great, you are part of the Divinity, you are love, you are beauty, you are truth!'
This knowledge needs to be instilled in people, rather than saying, ‘You are hopeless, you are no good. You are a sinner, and you are good for nothing.’

Bombarding a child as no good has brought in so many problems. We should instead say, ‘You are a part of the Divinity. You are loved the way you are. If you have some weaknesses, point them out and know that you will grow out of it.’

Whenever you feel, ‘Oh, I can’t do it', then you can’t do it at all. But when you say, ‘I can get over this, I can do it’, then that energy, the courage, enthusiasm, zeal, and everything comes.
If you are a smoker and you say, ‘I cannot but smoke’, hey, come on, get up and say, ‘No, I will not touch cigarettes’, and then see what happens.

Similarly, if you’re suffering from bulimia and you say, ‘Oh, I’m so weak. I can’t do anything!’ Come on! Wake up! You are not weak.

The spiritual path instills confidence. You’re in the right place. But don’t be in a hurry.
If you want to walk ten miles, it won’t happen tomorrow. Practice. First walk one mile, then go to two miles, then five miles, and in two to three months, you can walk ten miles.
Anything needs a little patience and a little practice. I can’t just make this bud into a flower right now. If I open it, it will simply spoil. I have to put it in water and it will happen automatically.

Gurudev, do you read books?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Usually I don’t read books at all but last year when I was taking a long flight, from Japan to Canada, I read a book someone gave me called The Proof of Heaven.
This was written by a doctor who went into coma for 7 days. People thought his brain was dead and he would not come back. When he did come back he wrote his experience.
He said when he left his body he saw this light, a most loving light which he called Om. He said, ‘That light is my source’.

He has not read any scriptures before. He was an atheist. He would go to church only on Christmas Day, once a year, but never believed in anything.

There are many Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and all have reported the name of the universal light, the universal sound as Om, and this is what is said in the scriptures also, in the Upanishads and in the Vedas.

Lord Buddha had also said this. Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Shintoism, Hinduism, Sikhism and thousand of saints who were born in India, they all said that one sound is Om. That is our experience also.

When you go deep in meditation, the one hand clapping or the sounds that exists is Om. That is the source of everything. So Om is that universal sound. Scientists have also written this and experienced it.

When we go into deep silence and the mind is totally still, there is a hum and that hum is Om.

Aa, Uu, Mm. Aa is the creation opening up, Uu is its continuation, and Mm is its completion.

Om has many meanings, hundreds of them. Peace and love are some of them; Origin of life.

In the beginning the word was there, and the word was God. It is said in the Bible. Aa, Uu, Mm became Amen. A little distorted, it became Amen. And in Islam it became Ameen. But the original sound was Om which was there from thousands of years. There's more, we can go on talking about it. Instead of philosophizing or trying to understand it too much, you simply say Om.

Aa, the vibrations are in the lower portion of the body, Uu in the mid and Mm in on top part. So the prana is complete, it goes from bottom to top when you say Om.

Om is used in meditations by all religions, all sections of people for thousands of years. So we continue to use it.

What is the source of the mind?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Okay, first you tell me the source of waves, then I’ll tell you this.Mind is like the waves on the surface of consciousness. Consciousness is like the ocean, mind is like the wave and they continue to be there.

When the Sun comes, where does the darkness go? When you switch on the lights, where does the darkness go?

In partial light, your shadow falls on the floor, but when the light becomes bigger, the shadow disappears. Where did the shadow go?

I make a knot of this cloth and then I released the knot, where did the knot go? Has it gone from this cloth to that cloth?

Do parallel universal exist?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Scientists say that they do exist. There are many dimensions to this universe. I understand it like this; you are watching television, a particular program, and at the same time in the same room there are wavelengths of many other channels also present. But on your television only one channel is being projected because you are with that channel. If you change the channel you can see many other channels (dimensions). Similarly our consciousness has many levels. In different levels of consciousness, knowledge is also different.

(A member of the audience asked a question and it was inaudible)

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Everything is energy, everything is made up of one energy, but practically it is very different. In this room, this all wood, but you can’t use the chair for the roof or the roof for window, or the window for the door. But they are all wood. In the same way, everything is the same energy, the same molecule, but you can’t say eat mud instead of salad. Got it?

(A member of the audience asked a question and it was inaudible)

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Little food you must have. Even I’m eating little.

There are people living on prana, I have seen them but they don’t look so bright. I have met not one or two, but several people who are just not eating at all.

There is one gentleman on whom they did many experiments in America. This man just does sun gazing and does not eat food. But time to time he has some tea with 4 to 5 spoonfuls of sugar.

But I was not so inspired to try it. They don’t look robust. Not enough vibrant prana or personality. So I did not try.

I do fast. I fast for some days and I’ve done it in the past also. You can do it but I don’t advice that. You have to be in isolation, silence, with no activity, then you can fast for a couple of days.
I don’t advice that (fasting) without some juice or some fruits. One must take something. Not just live on prana.

If we were supposed to live like that, then why did God make the liver and pancreas, and all the enzymes in the body? He would have just made it such that you only breath all over. All hollow and empty. The fact that we have all these organs is that they need to be put to use, but not over use. We are experts in either shutting it down or over using it. Both are wrong. Moderation. Eat a little bit, minimum, that is good enough.

Please tell me how and where do thoughts come from.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

You have thoughts. They come in a string. Why don’t you sit and look where they are coming from. As soon as they come, catch them! And then wait for the other to come! See what happens! Tomorrow sit to catch the thoughts, and you will find where the source is!

(A member of the audience asked a question and it was inaudible)

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Sickness happens because of three reasons. One is when we violate the laws of nature, and the second is a carryover of karma. The third thing is, it is genetic. If you want to add the fourth, it could also be because of the environment. Now if we violate the laws of nature, and not just you, even if others violate the laws of nature, it affects your body. And the nature of the body is such, it has some resistance power but sometimes it gets sick.

Not everything comes only because of lack of spirituality, or in spite of spirituality. Even if a person is very spiritual, if he overeats, he will get sick; tummy will ache. If he fasts for too many days he will also get sick. So we should not violate laws of nature.

The candle is burning, it doesn’t say, ‘Okay, he’s a nice person I will not burn him and he’s a bad person, I’ll burn him.’ Anybody who puts their hand in the fire, will get burnt. Sometimes spiritual teachers also get it because they violate laws. They get so engrossed in doing things or caring for people, they may violate laws. Or if they eat too much or don’t eat (they may violate laws).

These days we have high electromagnetic waves in the society. Everywhere there is wifi, everywhere there are towers. The body doesn’t have enough resistance power to it, so it falls prey to it. Though people are keeping their mind uplifted, they are emotionally strong, but body has less resistance power many a times. The food we eat, the environment, all this affects us.

If a person burns a plastic, it produces enough dioxide to harm 1,000 people. A small plastic bag, if burnt creates so much dioxide. Environmental purity and care for environment has only started now, just a few years ago, before that nobody bothered about it. Isn’t it? People just used harmful chemicals. We use harmful chemicals in our soaps, in our detergents, room fresheners. We put so many insecticides. All these chemicals also affectes our human health. It doesn’t immediately show up, it shows up after 20 years.

Everyday day we put these chemical soaps on our body, and our body keeps absorbing them. Nobody told us about it. Our skin absorbs these chemicals.

You know our skin is the largest organ of our body. Like you don’t put chemicals in the eye, you shouldn’t put chemicals on the skin also.

In ancient India, there is a saying that only what you put inside, you should put outside. Do you drink your lotion? If you can’t drink it, you can’t put it on your skin also. That was the saying. They used to use turmeric, lemon, natural oils, all that on the skin.

Same way pesticides. Nowadays they don’t use them so much but they used to put pesticides everywhere. The grains on which pesticides are put, you leave them and no even an ant will eat it, no bug will eat it. No bugs eat it and you eat it! These are some of the reasons for our health not being too good.

Then, medication. Many times the allopathic medications we take only translate one disease to another disease. They really don’t cure. You have some liver problem, it will become a heart problem. If you have heart problem and you take medication it will affect the kidneys, and you take something for kidneys, your pancreas will be out.

I think now the world is going back to Ayurveda which says, go to the root cause of the disease and attend to that. Ayurveda is the ancient form of medicine. A holistic approach. They say only medicine will not work, along with that meditation is also needed. Both should be there.